15 December 2024 (Sunday) - Lydd

I woke with a minor headache. I blame the fifth pint of Harvey’s best. And then I found myself pondering a mystery. When we went to Battle the other evening I was busting for a tiddle all the way home after one pint. After five pints yesterday we drove from Hastings to home via Folkestone and I was fine. What was that all about?

I got up and opened today’s window of the Advent Calendar. I got a rabbit today. That gave me something to ponder as I scoffed toast and rummaged round the Internet.

 

I had a friend request on Facebook this morning seemingly from an old mucker from way back. However my old mate had posted on his real Facebook page that someone was using his name in a fake account, and asked people to report the fake. I reported it. Within seconds I had a message from the Facebook feds saying this forgery went against their community standards and they were going to remove the fake profile... A minute later I had another message saying they decided it didn't go against their community standards and they weren’t going to remove it...

And science has found something odd going on in space. Apparently the universe isn’t doing what science says it should be doing. This is actually amazing and of monumental importance. This is akin to finding that the world isn’t flat. But sadly the masses are more interested in Taylor Swift, Strictly Come Dancing, tits and bingo.

 

We took the dogs out for a little walk. We went to Lydd where there’s a new geocaching adventure lab series and quite a few Munzees too. The dogs behaved (mostly); there were no normal people swarming. A good outing.

On the way there and back we picked up some of the puzzle geocaches I spent ages struggling to solve over the last few months. The puzzle is that you are told the distance and bearing that a geocache is from the point at which a given photograph was taken. All you have to do is find exactly where the photograph was taken. The obvious way to find out was to do a virtual drive around the Romney Marsh using Google Street View, but sadly much of the footage of the Romney Marsh on Google Street View is from over ten years ago, but I got there in the end.

Like all puzzles they were easy when you knew the answer.

 

We came home and had an argument with the Alexa. We wanted some festive Christmas music. The Alexa wanted to play dire dirges. Telling it “Alexa – play Christmas music that isn’t entirely crap” didn’t help. We tried all sorts of commands and still it wanted to play frankly dreadful rubbish.

In the end the Alexa not so much won the fight as I gave up with it.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up bacon sarnies. I then slobbed on the sofa scoffing them and reading my Kindle app until the voices in my head came up with today’s instalment of the Advent story. And then we met with a minor disaster. We are probably going to have to turn off the water tomorrow. I can distinctly remember a conversation with the chap who did the new kitchen when we talked of how he would build the cupboards so’s we could get to the stopcock. Sadly he didn’t.

 

And then the doorbell rang. Some delivery chap was on the doorstep. He thrust a package into my hand and then jabbered about credit cards. The package was warm. Someone somewhere had ordered a takeout to be delivered. Occasionally we get stuff delivered for Beaver Lane (as opposed to “Road”) so I asked him did he want Beaver Lane or Beaver Road. “Yes” he replied with a dopey smile. It soon became apparent that the chap’s spoken English was as good as my spoken Urdu. With no address on the parcel there wasn’t much else I could do but loudly announce “wrong house”, put the package back in his hands and close the door on him.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted some rather good enchiladas which we washed down with a bottle of Jacktone merlot. At £3.99 a bottle from Aldi you really can’t complain.

As we scoffed we watched the semi-final of “Lego Masters: Australia”. It was rather good…

14 December 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Family Party

I woke at half past four and lay awake unable to nod off… and suddenly the alarm was going off. That rarely happens. I opened the next window of my Advent Calendar, then made toast and had my usual brekkie ritual.

This morning there were several arguments on Facebook about episodes of Star Trek that aired thirty years ago, and a religious argument about flying fish on the National Geographic page. There was very little that I’d actually signed up to see though. These days most of the dog-related groups are filled with photos of dogs which have recently died. No one posts pictures of their dogs doing anything; they just wait until it is too late. And Facebook rarely (if ever) shows me anything about walking in the countryside, fishing, Sparks, ELO or any work related stuff. Not even any ladies of dubious morals any more. Mind you these days I seem to get endless suggestions that I might like to join groups about Calvin and Hobbes.

I wouldn’t.

 

I munzed. Some of the local munzees had been cursed overnight (it’s a Munzee thing) and got Wordle on the fourth attempt.

We then set off to Dog Club where we had a rather good time; if somewhat cold and muddy. Dogs charged about in the mud, treats were scoffed. I love it. And one of our number gave us a little pressie with a lovely message in the card thanking us for giving up our Saturday mornings to run it. I must admit I don’t feel I give up anything – I love Dog Club.

 

We came home for a cuppa, and I posted today’s instalment of the Advent Story to the world. I’m not sure where this story is going, but then I never know where the thing is going. I’m sure the voices in my head know what’s happening.

I changed out of muddy trousers, donned my gay apparel and set off to Hastings… via Folkestone to collect “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. Littlun’s gay apparel was her skeleton dress.

 

We had a rather good afternoon at the family Christmas party. Loads of food and drink, party games (I particularly enjoyed “pass the parcel”) and Santa visited too. The smaller ones had great fun with the dogs. The only down side to the day was that on looking back there must have been over fifty people along and I was certainly in the top five oldest.

 

I slept most of the way home. Today was a rather good day.

13 December 2024 (Friday) - Another Lazy Day

I woke to the sound of “er indoors ^TM”’s alarm. “er indoors ^TM” didn’t though so I prodded her a few times to no avail. Eventually I realized I was prodding Bailey.

 

I got up and opened the next window of today’s Advent Calendar, if only to give the voices in my head something to ponder whilst I scoffed brekkie.

As I set about my toast there was quite the argument on one of the Facebook travel pages that I follow when some woman was furious that he M25 motorway was open today. Apparently some pedestrian got killed on the motorway yesterday, and this idiot woman felt the motorway should be closed today as a sign of respect.

Someone else posted to another group about what a boring fellow her neighbour was as he had taken up calligraphy (posh handwriting) and for want of anything better to copy, was copying out the Bible. Someone was banging on about how they did that at school and he’d copied out psalm 119 which turned out to be the favourite psalm of quite a few people commenting on that Facebook post. For those of my loyal readers who aren’t among the righteous, psalm 119 sings the praises of being a do-gooder. I was tempted to ask where these people stood on psalm 137 which states “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” (look it up!) but thought better of doing so. Most so-called Christians get rather upset when you show them that they haven’t actually read their bibles.

 

I got the dogs into the car and we set off to the woods. As we drove Desert Island Discs was on the radio. Today’s castaway was Ebony Rainford-Brent. No – I’d never heard of her either. It turns out that she was the first black woman to play for the England women’s cricket team. She seemed a rather interesting person. I quite like listening to Desert Island Discs as I’m a very nosey person and there’s quite a bit about people’s lives on the show. It’s just a shame that nearly all of those interviewed either pretend to like one of three types of music; pretentious classical rubbish, operatic howling, or frankly dire dirges.

 

We got to the woods and had a good walk. Yesterday I mentioned how quiet the place was. It wasn’t quite so quiet today. As we walked we met another group of dog walkers who were very quick to tell me that the brown spaniel in their group wasn’t their dog at all. Clearly they hoped that dog was with me. The dog seemed to be quite happy walking with them though. Half a mile on, just at the point where we occasionally see deer I could hear a whistling and some shouting. That brown spaniel’s daddy wasn’t happy. And was even less happy when I told him the dog was half a mile away and going in the wrong direction.

Needless to say that what with all the racket he was making we didn’t see any deer today. Not even the dead one – the carcass had gone. Had the ranger cleared it away?

As we got close to the car park so we walked up to the car with a professional dog walker. And as we got to the car so Mabel’s mummy drove up. I opened my car’s boot and announced “Boot Dogs”. Both Morgan and Treacle jumped in the boot to the amazement of the onlookers. I get rather smug when they do as they are told. I told them that Bailey is too small to jump as I loaded her in.

 

We came home to have tummies washed. For once no one had rolled in muck, and it wasn’t long before all three dogs were snoring. I wrote up some CPD, then pondered today’s Advent story before spending the afternoon watching episodes of “Four in a Bed”. This afternoon a particularly porky young lady and her even chubbier father delighted in finding petty fault with all the other establishments in the competition, and then pulled out in a strop when it became clear that for all their faults everywhere else was streets ahead of what they were offering.

 

“er indoors ^TM” set off to see her dad (what with it being his birthday). I didn’t go. More and more Treacle is proving too noisy to be left unsupervised. Instead I had a shower and settled myself in front of the telly for another telly-thon. I started off with Downton Abbey in which the footman James was caught in flagrante with Lady Anstruther (and they were doing the dirty deed too).  And then we had the cliffhanger of the second season of “The Empress” in which the Emperor went off to battle in the Second Italian War of Independence. Hardly a cliffhanger though as Wikipedia tells us the chap was still alive fifty years later.

 

In between telly I dishwashered and laundried. I didn’t spend the entire afternoon and evening watching telly.  

Just most of it. Being semi-retired was all very well in the summer when I had stuff to do in the garden. It is becoming rather dull right now.

12 December 2024 (Thursday) - Dog Cam, Pot Noodle, Ironing, Telly

I’ve still got this cold that I’ve had for a day or so. It seems worse in the mornings and I felt particularly grim today. I got up and once I’d had a scrape I made toast and rolled my eyes as I peered into the Internet.  There’s never any arguments as bitter as those on the Facebook pages about garden ponds.

One ongoing squabble makes me laugh. There’s two sides to this one.

One group of people feel that tap water and rain water are urine straight from Satan’s willie and they would rather fill their ponds with concentrated sulphuric acid rather than with rain or tap water. These people spend all their lives treating their ponds with plants and filtering them to get the levels of various chemicals just to exactly the level that manufacturers of test kits feel they should be. And once they’ve got everything to just the level that the kit says it should be, they then then regularly empty out between a quarter to a half of the pond water every month and fill it with the tap water or rain water about which they are so derogatory. And they then fart around trying to get the levels of chemicals back to where they were.

The other group of people just let the pond get on with it, and occasionally top the pond up from the hose when it needs it.

Neither side seems to realise that both have pristine ponds.

They were all kicking off again this morning with the chemicals brigade claiming that rain water contains very high levels of chlorine. The fact that it doesn’t was neither here nor there to anyone.

 

I took the dogs up to the woods for our walk. As always, once away from the car park we hardly saw anyone. But we did find ourselves following some very normal people at one point. A mile from the nearest road and still they had their dogs on leads. Seriously?

I felt the woods were quiet today though. Quiet as in silent. Usually we hear birds chirping and squawking, and squirrels rustling in trees. And if we’re lucky there’s deer crashing about. But today was silence. You really could have heard a pin drop. What was that all about?

As we came back to the car park so we met a labrador. Mabel. Mabel’s mummy was rather taken with Bailey and Morgan, and shared dog treats with them. That was a result.

 

We came home for a bath. Tummies were grubby and again Bailey had disgraced herself by rolling in something foul. And with bath bathed so my phone had a flurry of alert messages. Somehow or other the Dog Cam I set up a while ago had decided to tell me every time it detected motion. And post-bath zoomies made for a lot of motion.

I eventually got the thing to stop bothering me, but it took some doing.

 

With it quiet I popped over the road for some lunch. They have some interesting stuff in the shop over the road. I got some Chinese hot chicken flavoured pot noodle thing. It was rather tasty, but had my lips and mouth burning for about half an hour after I’d finished scoffing.

With dinner scoffed I cracked on with the ironing. As I scoffed and ironed I watched more episodes of “The Empress” in which there was consternation when it transpired that the archduke had gone down with a case of manky knobrot. Princess wotsit of Belgium really wasn’t impressed, what with the archduke having plighted his troth and everything.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home and boiled up pizza and chips which we scoffed whilst watching Celebrity Bake off. During the show Lucy Beaumont declared that you can eat a lot more if you take your bra off.

Can you?

11 December 2024 (Wednesday) - A Walk, Tesco...

I wasn’t feeling on top form last night, and I slept through for ten hours. I woke with a bit of a sore throat and a mild headache. I suspect I’ve picked up the bug that “er indoors ^TM” has been suffering with this week. She says she caught it from Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” but I won’t hear a word said against my favourite lady.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. Today quite a few people were posting that they were feeling rather sad on the run-up to Christmas having lost loved ones. I wish there was something I could say to help these people…

 

With brekkie scoffed I took the dogs up to the woods. You could see we’d had serious winds recently – there wasn’t a single leaf left on any of the deciduous trees, and quite a lot of branches of evergreens were down as well. As we walked we met a few other people near the car park. One chap couldn’t hurry away quick enough as he said there was a spotty dog following him of which he was clearly terrified. We didn’t see any spotty dogs.

But as always once away from the car park area we only saw one person in three and a half miles. A jogger who made me laugh. She stopped and chatted and asked (with a smile) if I felt like her in that she’d been running for miles, not seen anyone else for ages, and on seeing me immediately felt resentful wondering who that bald bloke was to think he could walk in her personal woods. I agreed entirely. We too walk for miles and see so few other people that it might as well be our own woods.

As we walked I kept a close eye on Bailey. She shivers at Dog Club, and in the afternoons when the heating isn’t on. But she didn’t shiver at all when we were walking. Strange…

We came home where I washed mud from bellies and paws, and fox poo from backs. Well, from one back. Bailey.

 

After a cuppa I popped to Tesco for a bit of shopping. Tesco was hard work. Unlike the Tesco in Pembury yesterday, people were looking where they were going today. But I struggled; if only they could lay the store out in the same order as “er indoors ^TM” had written my shopping list.

But I did have fun with one rather posh looking woman. As I reached for a jar of cheapo jam she was picking up a jar of jam costing six times the price. “Rich Lady?!” I commented, and after a little chat about how I’m a poor pensioner I shamed her into buying a jar of the cheap stuff.

I hope she likes it. I do.

 

I then spent an hour or so going through rotas. I think management might have short-changed me on hours. Mind you when I say “think” I probably mean “hope”. After an hour I sent an email which will probably have some poor secretary spending a day to show that their sums are right and mine are wrong.

I wrote up today’s Advent story, wrote up some CPD, and by the time I’d had a shower the afternoon was gone.

 

After I’d watched today’s episode of Downton Abbey (in which Mr. Bates did for Mr. Green) “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of scoff which we washed down with a bottle of pinot grigio. I was going to say “sadly a grim bottle of pinot grigio”, but I’ve never had any other type of pinot grigio.

10 December 2024 (Tuesday) - Early Shift

With an alarm set I was awake far too early this morning. Whilst the rest of the world snored I watched an episode of “The Empress” in which the archduke tried to have his wicked way with Princess wotsit of Belgium.

And then I had my usual rummage round the Internet. There is usually at least one bitter argument raging, and this morning’s was about when and why Dodos went extinct.

Do these people have nothing better to do with their time?

There wasn’t a lot else going on this morning; it was probably too early.

I had a quick Munz, opened my Advent Calendar and got ready for the one day I’m working this week.

 

I set off to work on a very dark and rainy morning. As I drove I listened to the pundits on the radio spouting their drivel. More wars were kicking off in the Middle East, the government seems to have run out of steam... and New Zealand is looking to ban greyhound racing which would leave the UK as one of only four countries in the world where it is still legal.

 

I stopped off at Tesco in Pembury to get a sandwich. As always the manned tills were closed, and a gaggle of surly disinterested staff lurked around the self-service area alternately getting in the way of and sneering at those serving themselves. If I knew of a supermarket that doesn’t have self-service tills, is open before seven o’clock in the morning and isn’t a major diversion from my journey to work they’d have my money.

 

Work was much the same as it ever is. But starting early meant that I finished early. Having got to work in the dark I left just as the sun was setting. Sadly working in Pembury meant I didn’t get home as early as I might have done, but there it is. I’m only working one day this week so I can’t complain.

 

I came home to an empty house; “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs were babysitting Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. They came home half way through “Downton Abbey” in which Lady Mary was accused of being aloof. An allegation the Turkish attaché would have refuted had he survived the vigorous porking Lady Mary did at him.

 

The plan was to have fish and chips for dinner, but having scoffed all the chips the other day we resorted to our usual fallback position of KFC.

We scoffed it whilst watching last year’s Christmas Bake-Off and whilst listening to dogs snoring.

I might join them soon – the four o’clock start has taken its toll.

9 December 2024 (Monday) - Rainy Day

After a rather good night’s kip I opened my Lego Advent Calendar and pondered.

After I’d shaved I saw that everyone else had got up. I say “got up” – the dogs had gone from sleeping on the bed to sleeping on the sofa and dog beds.

 

I made toast and had my usual rummage round the Internet. It was the same as ever. Fewer and fewer people seem to be posting on social media (or if they are, I don’t see it), but one of the posts I saw made me think. There’s been an episode in America where the head honcho of a healthcare insurance scheme was recently killed. Healthcare in America is different to here in the UK. In the UK we have (for the most part) one organization which provides healthcare as is needed. That healthcare being given on the grounds of independently generated guidelines being applied to each case. In America it seems that healthcare is provided in the basis of how much money you’ve paid the insurance company, and the insurance companies are getting more and more picky about what they will pay for in order to maximise their profits. Not that they will pay out the full amount anyway. And healthcare ain’t cheap. I can remember thirty years ago my boss at the time priced up the cost of a standard treatment for anyone presenting with a particular form of blood cancer. Back then the treatment cost one hundred and ten thousand pounds. I can remember a friend spending a couple of weeks in an ITU bed and an American friend telling me that even with insurance, in the USA you’d have to sell your house to make up the money not covered by the insurance.

Healthcare ain’t cheap.

But so many Americans feel the state-provided healthcare offered by pretty much the rest of the world is fundamentally a bad thing. I wish I knew why.

 

I decided against going to the woods this morning. The weather was alternating between glorious sunshine ant torrential rain showers every fifteen minutes, and the dogs were asleep anyway. They seem to know when we are going out (when they get very over-excited) and when we aren’t (when they carry on sleeping).

Instead I drove up to the post office to post a couple of cards and to collect a parcel. Apparently Royal Mail had tried to deliver a parcel on Saturday; I only found out when I looked at my Amazon account and saw that it said “Held for pickup at carrier location”. The chap at the parcel office wasn’t impressed that I had no delivery slip. He didn’t actually call me a liar when I said that one hadn’t been left but wasn’t keen on typing the tracking number into his system. Particularly when on the second attempt he wondered if it might have been on the other system. It was on the second system after all. Sadly being on the second system meant that the parcel had just been chucked on a huge pile out the back of the sorting office on Saturday evening and the staff would deal with it when they has people in. Apparently this chap was working on his own.

I was told they will send me an email if and when they find it, but ironically the parcel arrived at home a couple of hours later.

I went on to Tesco where again there were dozens (if not hundreds) of people blundering around completely unaware that there were dozens (if not hundreds) of other people in the shop as well.

 

I’d arrived at Tesco in sunshine; I left in torrential rain. By the time I’d made us both a cuppa the sunshine was back again.

I did have plans to repair the poggered cupboard in the bedroom today, but “er indoors ^TM” said that it wasn’t a job I could do on my own. I think that was more “not allowed to” rather than “not capable of”, but that left me at something of a loose end.

I wrote up some CPD then had a little look at my bank account. Every month I’ve been giving money to the Kent Wildlife Trust. I have no idea who or what they are, and I only set up the payments on account of the impressive chest being brandished by the young lady on their fundraising stall at the County show a few years ago.

In all honesty I’d rather give a bung to the goat sanctuary.

 

When at a loose end I usually spend my time watching telly. I started off with episodes of “Four in a Bed”. Today’s episodes followed the standard format of three rather good bed and breakfast establishments being criticized for every piddling detail by someone who considered themselves to be a “big businessman” who in fact was running a rather piss-poor dive.

I followed this with an episode of “Downton Abbey” in which it transpired that Lady Edith’s paramour has vanished leaving her tubbed, and once “er indoors ^TM” had set off bowling I watched more of “The Empress”. She too was tubbed, but seemed more chuffed about it than Lady Edith was.

 

As I watched telly the torrential rain continually alternated with clear spells…

And the Normal People have arrived in my Lego Advent story…